Transcript: Episode #126: Fiction and Fun in Burma

Following is the full transcript for the interview with Rose Metro, which was released on October 6th, 2022. This transcript was made possible by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has not been checked by any human reader. Because of this, many of the words may not be accurate in this text. This is particularly true of speakers who have a stronger accent, as AI will make more mistakes interpreting and transcribing their words. For that reason, this transcript should not be cited in any article or document without checking the timestamp to confirm the exact words that the guest has really said.

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Host  00:16

Welcome to the Insight Myanmar podcast. Before we get into today's show, I want to let you know that we have a lot more written and video content on our website. If you haven't visited yet, we invite you to take a look at WWW dot insight myanmar.org. In addition to complete information about all of our past podcasts, there's also a variety of blogs books and videos to check out and you can sign up for our regular newsletter as well. But for now enjoy what follows and remember sharing is caring.

01:00

De I believe for all the young lives taking children used as pawns in and out of scape when I see their faces to think of the what ifs what could have been my heartbeat Heartbleed bursts at the same time. At the way that the day is a good day.

Host  02:33

I'm happy to be joined on this episode of Inside Myanmar podcast with Rose Metro who wrote the novel have fun in Burma, which we'll be talking about at length in this interview. So rose, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us about your book.

Rosalie  02:48

Glad to be here.

Host  02:50

Yeah. So let's get right into the book and what you wrote what it's about, why don't you just start us off and tell us a bit, give us a bit of the summary of what the book is about.

Rosalie  03:04

Yeah, it's about a young woman who is kind of between high school and college and becomes interested in Burma and spends plans to spend a summer volunteering there in a monastery. And it's set in 2012. She actually doesn't set out to volunteer in a monastery. She works with an organization that places volunteer English teachers, but she ends up in a monastery. And so it's kind of set against the backdrop of the Violence Against Rohingya people and the violence in Rakhine state that was happening at that time. And that was increasingly in the news in that time. So I guess it's about kind of a coming of age story. But combined with a sort of Passage to India, like story of a young white woman going to a place that she does not understand very well.

Host  04:08

Yeah, right, certainly. And that lack of understanding is something that highlights much of the interaction that we'll get into, but before that, looking at you as a writer, and your intentions and what you brought to it, what made you want to set out to write a book like this?

Rosalie  04:26

Well, I so I've been studying Burma as an academic endeavor for more than 20 years, and I so at that time, I had finished my dissertation, which was focused on the education of Burmese refugees and Thailand, particularly around the area of history and conflicting versions of history. And I was living in the US. I had young children, and I couldn't travel very much. So my usual trips to Thailand and Burma couldn't happen. And as I read the news about the crisis in Rakhine State and the violence, I wanted to engage with it in some way. But I didn't want to do it in an academic way, necessarily, because I felt like one, it really was not my area of expertise. And I had no on the ground knowledge of what was happening. But also, because I felt like the discourse had become very polarized, and I wanted to write something that would invite readers to sort of take on multiple perspectives, or to maybe understand an aspect of that conflict that hadn't been apparent to them earlier. So yeah, I think, you know, I started writing it in 2014. Before there was a ton of media attention to the topic. And so one motivation I had was just to let English speaking readers know that this was going on. And it turns out, the situation got so bad that I didn't really need to do that drawing of attention that much. So by the time the book came out in 2018, it was really in the news quite often. But yeah, I guess I had kind of mixed motivations, both to see what light I could shed on the topic from my very limited vantage point in the US only reading news articles and talking to friends who were there and stuff. Yeah, and also kind of share that news with a wider audience.

Host  06:53

Right, yeah. And I think that wider perspective, or just the perspective of different actors, is really what I think makes the book unique in that way. And that it, it's, at least in my reading of it, it doesn't seem quite to give an answer for why things are happening, or how to resolve it or who's right or who's wrong. But it really puts you in the perspective of, of the person speaking and of, of how they're conditioned, you could say, with a psychological or a Buddhist understanding of what conditioning is that they're how they're conditioned to come to that understanding and hold those viewpoints that they do. And then you see those viewpoints, constantly confronting and clashing with with others that as they come into contact. And I think as I personally as I set out to read the book, I think there's always a bit of trepidation when you're coming to see some kind of art form, whether it's a book or a movie, or a TV series, or whatever that is based on some some subject matter that you're very knowledgeable about just to see just feeling how much are they going to get this right? And how much is this going to be accurate to my lived experience. And it was funny because I was reading this book around the same time that this new HBO show, Tokyo vice came out. And I was talking with one of my friends who had we lived in Tokyo together for several years, some time ago. And he I laughed after a few years, but he's lived in Tokyo for for 20 years now. And he was describing his own trepidation and watching Tokyo advice for how well they're going to capture the live life in Tokyo and have been a really, really good accurate depiction. And just having that conversation with him about his experience watching Tokyo vise and living in Tokyo. I was thinking about this book and realizing Yeah, it was kind of the same feeling that I had and approaching this and just reading I've read just about everything on Burma out there and movies and everything else and seeing the absolute, you know, far end of atrocious SNESs of exotic vacation of absolute, you know, baseline understanding of nothing, two things that that get works that get some parts of it right and but there's some deeper level, I feel like well, they're not quite getting this. And so it's a very simple book. It's it's not long, and it's very it's the language of prose is, is also quite neat. But and yet it it puts the feeling of from someone who's lived there for some time and interacted with many different aspects of it. I really have to say there's an especially through the characters voices more than anything else. It's those characters voices that really bring out a lived a very authentic for me lived experience of these different layers. And what I appreciated was that the confusion, the conflict, the lack of understanding, it's not explained it's not resolved. And that's very authentic to my experience to where I have almost a sense of familiarity of See how certain kinds of conversations and situations progress and almost a familiarity the point of expectation or anticipation. And yet no explanation, even after all, this time of why things are that way, or how to make sense of it. And I've brought other foreigners into situations where I can completely explain what's happening and what will happen and even somewhat of the why it happens. But I can't really explain the the deeper meaning of like how I understand it. And I think that part really comes off. And so I'm wondering from from your hand, you know so much about this, his perspective is coming back to this issue of the different perspective of the different characters, and how they're trying to communicate. And so what, as a writer, why was this so important to try to illustrate these competing and conflicting viewpoints and perspectives and to bring these different people together to try to converse and not really have it ending up in a, in a resolved way? Where was this intention coming from you and wanting to portray this?

Rosalie  11:07

Yeah, well, thank you for that description and for appreciating the book and kind of seeing what I was trying to do with it. And I totally understand that trepidation of like, is this going to be horrible? I mean, there have been so many, really, not very good works of art, literature, documentary film, by people from outside Burma that really have good intentions. I mean, I think a big theme of the book is like, good intentions. unskillful. Bad. So I think, you know, and I really hesitated to write the book for that reason. So I am not a writer by trade. I'm an academic, I'm a university professor, and just kind of like, dabbled in writing over the years, hadn't published any thing that I had written in terms of like, fiction or whatever. But I was talking to a friend of mine, who was a novelist. And, you know, at the time, I was kind of struggling through writing this, like, classic first novel about, like, my family. And, and she was like, why don't you write something about Burma? You know, like, she knew that I had knowledge in that area. And I was like, No, it's just so cliched like it's going to be horrible. Like, I don't want to give an American audience what they want in a book about Burma. Um, and she paused and then she was like, right about that. And I think that that, that really inspired me to be like, Okay, I can write about representation, and how the people in the country are represented and frustrations I've had with that. And I can write about my own experience as a white American, coming into that culture. And, as you said, just not knowing what's going on and how, you know, I saw when I first went to the Thai Burma border, I lived in Chiang Mai for a year after I finished college. So I was older than Adela at that time. But, um, I was really struck by this lack of directness, I think even for an American, I'm a pretty direct, I've been told person, I tend to just I'm not conflict averse. Like I just say, what's on my mind? And it did not work there. You know, I would be like, Why are we moving apartments? Why are we moving our office? Or who's making the decision about this? And it was just like, not, um, I did not get the answers I was looking for. And I was so confused. And so I think, definitely part of what I wanted to capture in the book, you know, I made a strong decision from the start, not to write not to try to write from the perspective of any Burmese characters not because I think that like, people like me, can't or shouldn't do that, because, but rather, because I knew that I couldn't do it convincingly. And I wanted the reader to be kind of stuck in a delas experience and only be able to see what she saw and have to make sense of things and the way that she did. And so although I wanted to show different perspectives, the reader kind of has to like, guess a little bit at why the other characters do what they do you know, Adela is pretty forthright about her motivations and pretty much You know, she, she reveals unflattering things about herself and, you know, wants people to think well of her and wants to be regarded highly, but doesn't always have actions that match with that motivation. And that is a perspective I know well, so I always have to state very carefully. And there's a note in the back of the book, like this book is not at all autobiographical. None of these things happened to me, except doing a meditation retreat in Burma, but yeah, I, I just wanted to kind of convey that sense of what it's like to, to try to work through human interactions in in an unfamiliar setting.

Host  15:55

Right, and so looking at these different characters, obviously, Adela is the one that the prism through which much of the story is told, even though it's not first person, but there are these other characters that are there, and it might be good to flesh them out a little and understand who they are, what their motivation is, how they're understood. For example, we have Sarah, we have De ha, we have some of the monks and there's one nun, I wonder if you can just run through some of the principal characters and let us know not just who they are in the book, because I think that's not quite as interesting as the archetypes they represent. Because I think for me in reading this, these archetypes just flew off the page. And so these these characters that were described, they fit very clearly to me just archetypes of people that that are quite familiar. So I wonder if you could run through some of these characters that you displayed here, and just who they are in the book, and then what they represent and perhaps people like that, that you've met?

Rosalie  17:00

Yeah, sure. So I think you started with Sarah, Sarah is the woman who runs the volunteer organization, that Adela is going through, and she's one of the first people she meets when she comes to Myanmar. And you know, from the time I started going to the Thai Burma border, in like, 2001, there were always people who had, like, been there longer knew more. And could function as these kinds of gatekeepers, you know, of like, I'm more devoted to Burma than you are, or like, you don't know what you're doing. And it's repeated in all these different contexts. So, you know, when I first went to the border, there were people who had been like, men are PLA, you know, like when men are plugged fell in the jungle, this kind of iconic moment and like the struggle between the kg and you and the tama doll like years ago, or later, it was like when I went to I went to Burma for the first time right after Cyclone Nargis. And at that time, you know, there were people who there were just a few foreigners who had been living there. You know, before that happened, it was pretty hard to kind of just, like, stay there. But I did have a couple of friends and contacts. And I remember first, coming there and having them kind of, like, sit me down and be like, Listen, don't do this. Don't do that. Don't talk about politics. It's dangerous for people, like you have to understand the situation, you're not in Chiang Mai anymore, or whatever. And I really needed that and appreciated that. But there was also this, you know, I think, especially when I was a younger person, when I was in my early 20s, I had this kind of resistance to it, like, well, you think you know, so much like who are you to be telling me what to do. And so I I kind of, you know, I know, a couple of specific people who the character of Sarah is based on who kind of filled that role of like, educating newly arrived foreigners, on you know, how things worked, or how things worked, according to them. And I think, you know, initially Adela is kind of admire Sarah, but he's jealous of her and, you know, doesn't really know how to relate to her like wants to be friends, but Sarah is not interested in being her friend. She's like, way cooler than Adela is and so I wanted to kind of capture that and I don't know if that makes sense. Like that character in terms of the archetypes you were describing.

Host  20:00

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I mean, as you're saying that I'm thinking of a couple things. One is I just I don't know if you've read Burmese Burmese lessons, I think is the name by Karen Carmeli. About her love affair with a Burmese rebel. But so much of that, I mean, that book is I don't know when it was published. But I think it's written about like the 90s. I think that's when it takes place. And so much one of the big themes of the book has like the, the authenticity and the proximity of the white allies to the, to the movement, and both in terms of how long they've spent, how many risks they've taken, and who they're connected to. And she's very honest, in her her romantic relationship with this rebel leader as like, giving her greater authenticity. It's not why she's in the affair, but she also realizes that she's benefiting by being a more legitimate foreigner, it's helping so that came to mind. And then what also came to mind is, certainly when I came to Myanmar in Oh, seven, two to live, I was there oh three for the first time as a meditator, and then it was seven was when I started living and working. And I definitely felt on one hand, I felt a bit like deferring to those people who'd been there before and wanting to learn from them and respecting their, the time they spent. And then I remember that changing very quickly, where after a year or two, when new people would come, I would, I didn't really feel like a sense of that I was, I was smarter than them or that I didn't want to, I didn't want to interact with them, it was more of a feeling of like, I don't want to have the same conversations I've had over and over and over, I kind of want to wait until they've they've been through the ropes long enough. And then we can be peers. And I remember it's specifically one one time when two people came enjoying my work and they were very nice people and their friends today. But I remember at first just kind of like having the trying to impart my knowledge and what I learned and, and help in some way but also having a bit of a distance because I just didn't want to have to deal with all those same conversations. And it's not even really the the the the answers to their questions that are challenging, it's that the questions are challenging, and so many of the questions so many of the questions have to be unpacked and and the questions themselves are what needs to be examined. And and it's just a tiring process. And I remember after these two people had been there, I don't know what it was six months or something. I just remember feeling like Oh, they've they've this kind of thing clicked in me. And they're like, oh, like, I can just kind of hang out with them. Like, we can just like shoot the shit and like we, you know, we have different levels of knowledge and different levels of experience and interaction, but I can learn from them. They can learn for me, and it's more of like this, this, this pure relationship, whereas at the first couple months, it was a bit tiring. So yeah, those were things coming to mind as I heard your descriptions about Sarah.

Rosalie  22:58

Yes, totally. I think that describes that feeling really well. And I love Karen Connelly's work. And I think, you know, if any book inspired me in some way, she wrote a book a long, long time ago called touch the dragon and it's about being an exchange student in Thailand and high school. And it's excellent. It's just so honest, you know, which I think she brings to Burmese lessons as well. It's like this kind of unashamed, like listen, this is who I am. And this is what I experienced. And it's it's a combination of kind of anthropological interests with emotional honesty that I really appreciate. And let's see onto other characters. So one character who is important in the book and who is based on a specific person, but someone I never spoke with is de Pancho Watty. And so she's this nun who lives in the monastery where Adela is staying and she kind of becomes like a mother figure to Adela and watches over her and takes care of her when she gets really sick, but also kind of plays this role of like, showing her by example, what can't be explained in words. And so I did this meditation retreat in a monastery outside Yangon. Chemi, a youth center. And there was this nun there who Yeah, I never spoke to but she she just like showed me what to do. Um, she showed me how to walk. She showed me how to eat she showed me how to bow and it it wasn't like had didactic, you're doing the wrong thing. Kind of teaching, it was really gentle. And it was really, really beautiful. And I just had this one moment where like, she was walking really slowly in front of me. And I was like, you know, who showed her how to walk that way. And then who showed that person how to walk that way. And I just had this feeling like, it goes all the way back to the Buddha, you know, like, there's this chain of teaching and experiential teaching and showing people how to do things. That is this amazing lineage. And so although I never spoke to that particular person, she was kind of the inspiration for that figure in the book. And so I tried to imagine a bit of, you know, a person like that life story and how they would come to be living in a monastery and, and taking this relationship to a foreign meditator.

Host  26:07

Yeah, and the thing that stands out with that relationship, is that you get a sense of, of this nuns compassion and care and taking on the responsibility of overseeing and helping her as a sister or daughter. And that's really beautiful. And yet, there's something that's not I don't know if it's quite spoken or addressed in the book, but it was a sense I had and also one that was familiar, is there's like, a further desire of emotional space or need or, or a deeper kind of friendship, and you have the kind of silly friendship that Adela has with her friend back in the US. But it's it's like this, this greater emotional connection that she desires with a nun given how she's helping, but it's it just doesn't materialize. And it's another one of those things where I think we can have a whole podcast discussing where, why, why and how that expectation, quote, unquote, falls short. And I say, quote, unquote, because this is subjective, this is from a delas. And this is all your book is all about perspectives. And from the doulas perspective, there's this at least I sense this greater emotional connection she would like and as, as close and tender as the nun is, that's just not something that develops, to the extent of what a dilemma like.

Rosalie  27:30

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way. But I can, I can see how you would. And I think what's been coolest about writing this book is just that. Readers kind of bring their own experiences to it, and especially a reader, like you who knows so much of this setting. Yeah, I think, honestly, Adela doesn't realize, except in maybe one moment in the book, that there's anything missing about that relationship, you know, like, and I think she kind of takes it at face value, or takes that person at face value, because she's the nun is so nice to her. And she hasn't experienced that kind of compassion. But, you know, maybe it has to do with the fact that like, that none would would do what she did for Adela for anyone. And exactly, yeah, Adela is not she wants preferential treatment, she wants preferential love, she wants the kind of you know, something that's personal. And that's not what the nun is offering.

Host  28:40

Right? Right, you're special, you're meaningful to me, this relationship is valuable to me. And that's right. The nun is not is not approaching that in that kind of way.

Rosalie  28:50

Yeah. And so a couple of other characters in the book, there's compagnia, who's a monk who's kind of, you know, greets Adela when she first arrives and is kind of nearest to her in terms of like, their communication or their perspective. And you know, that that character is not based on a specific person, but I did teach English in a monastery in Thailand actually, was like a Shawn watt in Chiang Mai years and years ago, and it was, you know, it was something that I, I wasn't really comfortable doing, like an organization I was working with was like, Hey, you should go teach English in this monastery. And I was like, is that really appropriate? Like, you know, and I was, I was so surprised by how frank and open the monks were unwilling to talk about their experiences and their lives and I didn't know You know, it's hard to understand the boundaries and relationships like that and Adela gets tripped up like she overstepped boundaries, she misread signs, you know, and I did not teach in that monastery for very long, but I really feared doing that. And so I guess, you know, that monk Binya is based on kind of relationships that I had with those monks that I taught. And then the the final important character is the HA, who's this x medical student, kind of couldn't finish medical school because he was imprisoned. And, you know, that's kind of the archetype of like, the student protester. And, you know, there's so many different generations, right, like, ad generation, or 96th generation, or, you know, now this new generation, but I wanted to kind of capture, I guess, a little more complexity about that archetype. Because I think it was always kind of presented to me as a very simple thing, like, I am willing to die for my country, like, I will sacrifice whatever it takes. And there's, I mean, people definitely bring that to it. And there is so much bravery, and, and so many inspiring qualities that people bring to that activist work. But they're also human, you know, and not, you know, enlightened people. And so they make mistakes, and they do things for mixed reasons. And and so I wanted to kind of humanize that archetype, a little bit, I guess.

Host  31:57

Right? Yeah. So that's, that's a good breakdown of who the characters are. And we can get into some of the action and how they, how the plot progresses. But before that, one of the things I also want to call attention to is it within this book, and within the reality of this book, there are two other books that are are referenced quite consistently. One is probably not a surprise Burmese days by George Orwell. I mean, that is that is any any, I think anyone writing any kind of document of any kind that refers in any way to white people coming to me and Maher that that is just the foundation that everything springs from so that's, um, that's not a surprising comparison to bring in or reference. Another one is Heart of Darkness, which is, again, not maybe not taking place in Burma, but also a very foundational novel piece of literature, looking at the White experience in the non white world, really, but I'm, I'm wondering, your choice of bringing these in what what you this is what I'm thinking as a reader, as a writer making these decisions to want to reference these books, and to not just reference them as existing, but actually keep coming back to them and spending time and having them be actually a part of your novel? What what comparisons? Did you see in what you were writing in these two books? And how did they relate to the story unfolding?

Rosalie  33:26

Yeah, I mean, I think the decision to make those two books so much a part of the novel is kind of like a nerdy academic decision that I you know, I wanted it to be inter textual, and I wanted, I wanted people to think about ways that they've seen Burma or other colonized countries represented, and to think, therefore, about, like, the tradition of literature about colonization, and the relationship to current practices of, you know, international organizations and NGOs coming into countries and sort of often doing what they think is best for people without always consulting the people that they're supposedly helping and and think about the parallels there. But yeah, I mean, Burmese days is a wonderful book in that it captures that like, just instability of power, I would say, you know that Florrie the main character is like, he has all this status and power but he he's so pathetic and like, you know, can't can't get a handle on his desires and doesn't know what he wants and makes all these poor choices. And I'm not so different from Adela we can say, um, but also because so many of those books are written about men and from the perspective of men, you know, that I wanted to change that up a little bit. I'm in Heart of Darkness is in there, mostly because it's like what book would a high schooler have read that would have any relationships with what she was seeing and, and that was the one that kind of rang true. But the book that's never mentioned in the novel, but that definitely influenced it most is em Forster's Passage to India, which I read. When I was the first time I went to Thailand, I just like picked it up in a US bookshop. And, you know, the main character is also named Adela. And at one point, she says, I want to see the real India. And I was kind of taken aback, and I was like, How is this guy from 100 years ago in my head? I felt so seen in that moment. And I just kind of real that was my moment of realizing like, I am not the first like young white woman to come work to the east, you know, to see what it's like and sort of dreaming of some kind of authenticity and dreaming that I'm different than everyone else who's done this before. But yeah, I wanted to put my book in relationship to these other books, kind of for the reason you brought up at the beginning about like, just thinking about, like traditions of representing places like Burma, and how it's often done.

Host  36:29

Right, and one of the things that I found curious, and one of the passages in the email exchanges between Adela and her professor about Heart of Darkness, is this idea of whether or not the narrator is reliable. And I was wondering if that was a wink to who Adela was, and I was wondering if this is something that readers of your book should also question about the reliability of Adela as a narrator?

Rosalie  36:54

Yes, yes, exactly. So like, you know, we only have her perspective in the book, and I think how much people relate to her really depends on their positionality. You know, I've had, um, you know, a lot of American readers relate to her a lot and are like, yeah, she's just doing the things that makes sense. And these other people around her are being really confusing and, and then other people are kind of more critical of her and actually really annoyed by her. And that's more like, the Sarah's world in a few Adela is in their day. And it was kind of a fine line to make a della like, relatable enough, but not so annoying that you couldn't get through the book with her. And I, you know, in a first in the first draft of the book, she was she had finished college, not high school. And I had a couple of readers tell me like, no, like, I just can't accept this behavior from this person. Like, it's, it's too hard to watch. And so I made her 18, specifically, so that she was on that border line between like child and adult, and maybe people would be willing to forgive her a little more, at least, like see her perspective. But now I'm losing track of what your initial question was.

Host  38:25

Oh, it was, it was about the reliability of the narrative.

Rosalie  38:29

Oh, yes. So Right. I mean, you only know what she tells you. And there are some points where she's clearly wrong. She learns later. So, you know, a reader could certainly especially a Burmese reader could get to the end of the book and be like, she didn't have any idea what was going on. And I wanted the book to be able to be read in multiple ways in that sense that I really wanted to not conflate her perspective with truth in any way, and make it clear that there were all kinds of limits on what she was able to perceive about her situation.

Host  39:08

Right. And, and again, this comes back to so much of the book is about this perspective, and the conditions the form that perspective. That being said, there's also one can also say there's there's two primary worlds that are or two primary events or themes that are being portrayed in the book that are overlapping one is the Rohingya crisis that starts to break in these pages. And then another is this Adela, coming in to volunteer and this whole mindset of travel and volunteerism and overseas experiences. And these are two extremely different things with really no intersection, except for the fact that they're forced to confront each other because they're happening at the same time. So what were your thoughts in wanting to create It leads to different parallel tracks and themes, which then had no choice but to converge.

Rosalie  40:08

Yeah, I mean, I think that's so often the way it happens, like, just that there are these situations in the world. And, um, and, you know, Americans always think they have the solution, the answer can fix everything. And so they will go anywhere and sort of insert themselves into any situation that's happening. And I think, you know, that's something that I didn't see clearly, as a young person, I didn't, the first time I left the US I, I did this semester abroad in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1998. And I just, I did not understand so many things about that society. And I. So I got this idea, me and these other American friends to like, make this documentary about the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon. And this, this Lebanese professor who had trained at Harvard, we, like brought this idea to her and we were like, we had this great idea. And she was just like, oh, my gosh, like, sit down. You're not gonna do this, like? And then she said, Why do Americans always think they can fix everything? I was like, you know, I was taken aback by that, because I didn't even know that that was like a thing. You know, years old, like I thought I was being really original.

Host  41:51

We're all conditioned. Right?

Rosalie  41:54

Yeah. And so I think I wanted to put that in the book of like, this is a super serious situation where people are losing their lives and they're losing their homes. Yeah. And to Adela in a way. It's just something cool to put on her Facebook page that she's involved in and that she's close to and you know, that's a, it might be a cynical way to read it. And I think, you know, her motivations are mixed she, she has the real intention to like, reduce suffering and help people, she doesn't really know how to do it very well. And that's something that it seems like happens all over the world.

Host  42:41

Right, so staying on the Rohingya issue and looking at it from the other perspective, we talked about the archetypes of the characters overall, kind of who they were and what they represented in the book. But there's another layer of archetypes. And this is kind of the archetype of the Bomar response and understanding to what's happening and we have pensive allottee sorry, is that the right word? Read

Rosalie  43:07

on conversation with a friend who's like a language scholar and he was like, listen, in Burmese, it would be like PN Zawadi. It would be pancha walkie so I just went with like, the pronunciation I was more familiar with. So I say Panchavati.

Host  43:22

Right, right. Because often things are like written with one spelling and pronounced another way. And so then you have to, you know, yeah, so, um, so the nun, the HA and goon Jana caught a monk from Rakhine State. And these are kind of Bomar archetypal responses to the unfolding crisis, which is really interesting. So can you break down those three diverse perspectives of how they are understanding and seeing and expressing what's going on?

Rosalie  43:53

Yeah, so Luna Monica is a monk from Rakhine State. And he is very convinced that like the Rohingya are the villains, and they're causing all the problems and that you know, that that kind of came from an experience I had actually long ago, you know, in my early days in Thailand with a friend from Rakhine State who was really expressed some prejudices about Muslims. That surprised me. And this was right after 911 So I was I was living in Thailand at the time of 911. And it was so interesting to see that crisis kind of through other people's eyes. But yeah, this one Rakhine friend I had was like, yep, not surprised at all. And I was like, What are you talking about? And, you know, we're kind people are, are have been oppressed by the mob people for so long. And, you know, I guess one reading is that they have then turned that oppression on religious minorities or ethnic minorities in their own situation? And, um, so I wanted to have that just because that It surprised me so much at the time. And I was like, are you really saying that like, all Muslims are evil? And he was like, oh, yeah, like, I know that from personal experience. And he was someone who was involved in the democracy movement, you know, like, he was someone who shared a lot of political views with me. And so I wanted to put that in there. And then I'm Doug, puncher, watse the non is kind of more like, well, you know, violence is not good. No one should hurt each other. And kind of doesn't really have much to say about it. Other than that, um, doesn't have a political view, you know, feels like she doesn't understand politics, she doesn't understand. She's very humble, and accepts the limitations of her knowledge and doesn't have the urge to have a position on it, which is frustrating for Adela. And then Thea is a more educated, you know, reads the newspaper all the time is informed about the conflict sees it in, you know, his, his mom is kind of this like, pretty nationalist, Buddhist perspective, and he's, he is critical that but also understands why she feels that way. And, and probably has the most nuanced view of the situation, right. Um, but, you know, when the, when the conflict broke out, and I talked to friends from Burma, friends who I had shared so many perspectives within the past. I was, you know, I felt like, we were both kind of surprised by each other's perspectives, you know, and it felt awkward and uncomfortable. And, you know, I was kind of like, listen, and it's pretty clear that like, this violence is happening, and that is directed mostly toward these Muslim people. And some of my friends just didn't see it that way. You know, they were like, well, maybe that's happening to some people, but it's not as many as the newspaper says, like, there was a lot of resentment from my Burma friends from Myanmar, about the nature of the news coverage. And I think that, that it, it should be criticized and can be criticized, it's like, newspapers and journalists weren't interested in like, the suffering of the Korean people, for instance, for the past, like however many years, and also not particularly interested in, um, you know, violence, all kinds of different violence has existed in the country. And for whatever reason, the international media just really kind of latched on to like the Rohingya as the most oppressed group ever. Like, I think I literally saw that headline, like, and I see that I mean, I wouldn't, it's not like I would put forward some other group that I think is more oppressed, but I think that that kind of very one sided coverage, or Yeah, it was, was frustrating to some friends of mine who just wanted a broader view of the situation in the country. And so I wanted to kind of put those perspectives all in there.

Host  48:36

That's really interesting, the commentary about about de Haan AI, in your relation with your friends, I had very similar where I, as it was breaking, I was going to some of the friends I had that whose viewpoints I, I really come to trust and really and rely on and when I remember seeing, they would people would sometimes say a Facebook post, like, Hey, I've been silent about this, but now I want to really give the real situation I was like, Oh, finally, like, really get like a nuanced perspective. And then and it was it was anything but that and it came to the point that I just realized I just couldn't talk about this with anyone I did not want to go there because such a conversation could stain the whole relationship. And it was it was very, and as you said, this does have a right to be criticized. This does have a right to be mentioned. To me. The only thing I can think of it bringing up was like, you know, Germany 1930s And like some some Aryan German being like, oh, you know, like the way some of these people are thinking about Jews. It's just, you know, better just not to have those conversations better to not let it get there because it's just starting to stain so much and it was really quite alarming to realize that I there was just a topic I didn't even want to broach with people because these people that were otherwise So overall very noble and very admirable in so many ways, were expressing a viewpoint that I just couldn't understand. And, and not, not that, that I was trying to come with an agenda or had a point or knew knew exactly the nuances of what happened. But there was just an absolutism of a cold, detached pneus, of not wanting to care about people's welfare. That was just cut off. And people that were so compassionate in a Buddhist metta sort of way, suddenly, that compassion was not being extended for a whole group of people. And it was just, it was very confusing to me to know how to how to engage. On the other hand, I appreciate the nuance that you express. Because I also felt that and I am giving a description I gave, as is more in the later years of as this, as this crisis progressed, in the earlier years, I, as it started to break, I had another reaction, and that that was, my reaction was formed more out of my aversion to the way that Western press was covering it than what was actually happening. And my aversion to how it was being portrayed and covered was so great, that it actually prevented me from taking the steps to want to learn what happened, because I just felt the level of ignorance and sensationalism was through the roof, and was was so inappropriate. And, you know, there was just so much missing from just the way that it was being portrayed, as you mentioned, you know, like with the suffering of some of the other ethnic minorities and many other ways, and I couldn't break through to actually learn about it in those early years, because I just was seeing like Western media latch on is this, this, this new, great thing that they wanted to cover. And so at first, I was kind of sympathetic to the Bomar reaction to this. But then as it progressed, and the trenches just got people got a bit tighter and where they were standing and a bit more obstinate and wanting to understand anything else, then this breakdown occurred. But what's really interesting to me is that when I think back the first the real watershed moment for me, and not just for me, but I think for many, many people, most books I read about the Rohingya reference this point it was the Time magazine cover, reroute to that said, the face of Burmese terror and are the I think the face of Buddhist terror is what it said. And I remember the exact place I was standing when I saw that the Chiang Mai train station, and I stood paralyzed because I had been coming out at that point, I've been coming out of years of experience living in remote monasteries, where I was the only non Burmese there and having respect towards the lay monastic relationship and just the not knowing anything really about the crisis at that point. But just seeing that cover. It just, it brought back images of colonialism of you know, lay, white lay critics that were were going after a monastic and in ways that were more suited to a Western journalistic, perhaps even sensational context and not so much on on not not understanding this at a deeper level than just these it brought up all this and it really drove a wedge. I mean, it drove a wedge in me seeing that cover. And I think it drove a wedge and a lot of people on one side or the other to see a cover like that. What's so interesting is that that article was written by Hannah beech, who is currently the bureau chief, The New York Times in Southeast Asia and is primarily responsible for covering Myanmar. I spoke to her last year about a number of things and that that article came up. And I was a bit delicate, and how I was talking about, you know, my feelings towards just how, how impactful that was, I was kind of broaching it in a delicate way. She told me that she did not want that cover. That was not her choice. And she protested against it. And that the article, in fact that she wrote was quite different in its approach than what the cover indicated. And all of a sudden, I reflected, and I realized, I never read the article, I'm basing everything on how powerful that cover was. I mean, that has got to be in this age of internet journalism that has got to be one of the most impactful magazine covers of anything in the last 10 years, or whatever it was. I mean, so many people go back and reference that. And it's incredible to me to realize that, that the author of the article herself was was not in favor of that cover and felt it was in contrast to the article. And yet it's one of those things where like, the nuance gets lost and everyone just comes back to what that cover means to them.

Rosalie  54:51

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, just my limited experience doing journalistic work is like Yeah, you never get to write the headline um, You know, the publisher chooses the way they're going to present your work and what kind of tagline they're going to put on it. And I can understand why that was. It's frustrating. And it's like, well, you want to get your work out there. But are you willing to do it? You know, when it's going to basically be this like clickbait type thing? And, yeah, that cover made a big impression on me as well. And actually, I, I wrote about it in the last part of the book, but I think I pretty sure I cut that out at some point, because it was just like too long and complicated. And I didn't want to get into all that explanation. But yeah, it really made an impression. And I mean, I don't know if you've probably read a lot of Hannah beaches, other work. But she read, she wrote this amazing article in The New York Times, about what to do when you realize that the people you're interviewing are not telling the truth. So she describes like going to this camp, and this Rohingya woman is like telling her this story of, you know, her baby was killed or something terrible happened. And so they try to like fact check it and realize, at least according to them that like it couldn't possibly have happened. And she writes about, like, what do you do as a journalist like, this stuff definitely happened to other people. It just didn't happen to this particular person. And this person has seen so much and been so traumatized, like, Who knows why they were telling that story, they thought they would get some kind of compensation, or they just saw that happen to someone else, and they want it to get, or someone told them to say that it's like that trap of like, being in a delas mind and not being able to figure out why the people around you are doing what they do. And anyway, she just wrote about it in a really nuanced way. I thought about the dilemmas of covering that kind of disaster, which involves so much human suffering, but also, there's so much that's not knowable, including people's motivations. And you kind of have to decide how to present it. And I tried to put this into the book a little bit in the fact that like Adela has this blog that she's writing that she's her, her high school teacher was like, Listen, if you're going to leave school early, before graduation, you have to like write this blog that we're all going to read at this like, kind of elite private prep school she goes to and so you see her, like trying to put her experience into words and trying to be authoritative, but not really knowing what she's talking about, and making generalizations and, you know, people work their whole lives to sort of be good journalists and figure out what the ethical thing to do is. And then other people can just like write some version in a blog, and there's no accountability, or they can write a Facebook post, or they can write whatever they want. And it can be really misleading and limited. But but also hard to unpack.

Host  58:13

Right, right. You have an excerpt in your book on these different understandings and perspectives and when and the conflict between them about the Rohingya crisis, as that develops in a conversation. Can you read that excerpt?

Rosalie  58:28

So this is a scene where Adela has this article from the New York Times about the crisis and she has brought it in for the monks to read in her English class. And so you'll hear about some of the monks in their reactions. Lucila came first, he picked up the article and read the headline, very terrible, he said, Yes, very bad, Adela agreed. You know these things from your own country. He said. Yeah, she said a little surprised he made the same connection she had since 911. It's gotten a lot worse. He shook his head sadly. The others came in as a group neat and dry under their special orange monk umbrellas. Whooping Yan nodded vigorously when he saw the article. Yes, we must discuss this one. He said Samos A B must understand our country. Yeah, I have to say I don't really understand. Adela was relieved that maybe we can do something about it like something to help. Yes, we can do said Agha smiling. Why not? Yeah, like maybe some kind of fundraiser or public statement just to let people know that this is not okay. All the monks nodded and Adela felt herself getting excited. She could actually do something I should speak about one matter soon. Yanagida I am Rakhine people from Rakhine State. Our Rakhine people are Buddhists for 1000s of years our kingdom Raghu and he went on for some time that that an ancient kingdom with the famous Buddha statue that had been stolen by a Berman King Adela didn't see what it had to do with Muslims. But she had learned that neonic didn't like to be interrupted so she waited for the other monks to intervene. Like I say, we'll see love finally jumped in. You had the same problem in your country. Muslims come in bomb your towers. Well, that was different adults and slowly Wait a minute. So you're saying that this conflict is the Muslims fault? Maybe when she and Lucila had said that the situation was very terrible. They hadn't agreed on why? Yes, of course, their fault they do this riot and raping. Adela looked around the room in utter disbelief. The other monks nodded, confirming OCLS charge via seeing his teacher frowning, piped up CMR of course you know about our national races. He and Adela had discussed the Civil War previously when he'd seen her reading, insurgency and the politics of ethnicity. He said he felt sympathy for all the ethnic peoples and wanted peace. He supported Aung San su chi and his older brother had participated in the same 1988 demonstrations that Kotaku had, in my opinion, beyond began gently, these people are not Myanmar people, not our red national races. They come from Bangladesh only recently, these people, but there are Muslims all over Burma, right, Adela asked her it was beating faster. She had that feeling again of being in over her head and being dropped into cold water. They can't all have come from Bangladesh. Maybe some open Yeah, admitted. The other monks looked down at the article with knitted brows. Perhaps they didn't understand the English Adela told herself. Maybe she wasn't communicating clearly enough. She tried again. Say they did come from Bangladesh. Don't they have human rights just like everyone else? I think we must protect our culture said neonic ohada Lee, but what does it have to do with culture she asked people can be from different religions and still have the same culture like in American culture. There are people from many religions many races I mean, they're African Americans and your country is very different to ours interrupted in Yanaka then you cannot understand or Myanmar people I have read about this problem in your country also said Who sila some people come in by secret from Mexico with no passport make many babies, but they're not Muslim in any way. There's nothing wrong with Mexicans. I love Mexicans, Adela insisted desperately glad that no Americans were there to hear how silly She sounded. Was sila shook his head and bewilderment. Not all Muslim are bad. Only about 99% said dunya Anika with great seriousness as if you were quoting a well known statistic. Did you know 100% of the rapes and Myanmar are done by Kulla Adela couldn't believe what she was hearing. Kip had said that Kulla was like the N word How can a monk use it? In Myanmar we are Buddhist for a long time so neonic but now some are changing some Muslim marry Myanmar women so their children will be Muslim. The mosque give them money for taking Myanmar wife. I know this from my own experience in my hometown. Adela found in Yannick is theory so bizarre that she didn't know how to respond. She tried a different tactic that the whole country isn't Buddhist there are Christians here too, right? Okay, fine. Christian is no problem in Rakhine State soon Yannick a very small number and he said stabbing at the article this is not correct. So called Rohingya are not minority they grow and grow. It is we Rakhine who are a minority now minority in our own state. Many years ago these Muslim people have an army they tried to separate and take over. His voice was louder now and he leaned across the table toward Adela whooping your pad of the air between them. Same up I know it sounds strange for you. You came here just some weeks ago, but we face this problem a long time not there not a problem there people she gasped. The Bay has any Muslim friends who knew Annika demanded Well, she searched her memory there was that freshman in her phys ed class yes yes I do. And all my Muslim friends are very nice very kind. When Jana could practically shuddered with disgust than Agha jumped in smiling as he exclaimed that Muslims only went to stores owned by other Muslims. Adela was shocked she had never encountered such blatantly prejudiced statements. Edgerton fields had a strict code of conduct related to hate speech, and even the most subtle comments could leave one open to accusations of racism or sexism. By comparison, she found amongst views of Muslims almost laughably straightforward. She felt like she had entered another place in time like she was Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird standing up against injustice. But it was so confusing. She didn't want to argue with the monk she wanted to go back to the place in the conversation, where she thought that they agreed about how to fix the situation in Rakhine State. Only it was Surya the oldest monk had stayed quiet Adela had thought of him as the least friendly. But now she appealed to him for help. With Surya What do you think? His deep set eyes were so dark Adela couldn't see his pupils. Monks should not involve in politics. He said that silence the others, they didn't read the article that day, the rain spattered coffee still lay on the table at the end of class Adela threw them in the garbage.

Host  1:05:26

Yeah, that's, that's an incredible passage, I mean, that that's just an amazing job of bringing these different viewpoints into contrast with each other. And from the very start of that conversation, I got where I was going, I just thought it was so brilliant, the, the beginning of that, that they're both agreeing, it's terrible, and the irony, even the humor of finding out why they think it's terrible. And then the conversation progressing as you just see Adela trying so hard to use her tools and understanding of logic, to be able to navigate through an understanding, while also a promotion of her progressive views. And the confusion in doing so. And it a couple of thoughts as I'm as I'm, as I read it, and as I'm hearing it now, one thought is that I was thinking about this scene, in particular, the book in general, but especially this scene, as a contrast between an academic paper or a journalistic article, and a novel. And I realized that there was something about the book in general, but especially this scene, which seems to impart some kind of knowledge or understanding of the situation without in any way trying to present how to resolve it, or, really, it's just kind of examining the problem more than trying to figure out what to possibly do about it, and how to bring these viewpoints together. It doesn't even attempt to do that, if anything it tries it seems to show that the difficulty and even the fallacy and that, but there's something in a novel a literary work that is able to illuminate and bring out the reality of this, of not just the crisis, but of the way the crisis is held and seen in a way that a head on factual take of an article or a book or something couldn't do quite to this effect. And so I'm wondering what you thought as you were writing this, and having been able to take that literary angle, what it allowed you to do, in trying to bring life and description to the scene, and context and even the facts around it. That going more head on and academia journalism might not be able to.

Rosalie  1:07:54

Yeah, exactly. Um, so I've done a lot of academic writing about Burma, and it's, you know, it has its purpose, and I think it's valuable, but it also is just very limited. And, and, you know, it gets tiresome to like, defend an argument, you know, and at some point, you're just like, do I even really believe this anymore? Like, you know, like, why do we have to argue for a specific interpretation or a specific perspective. And so I really wanted to just be able to, instead of saying, like, this is what's wrong, or what's right, just like, these are some things that people say, and I wanted, you know, it's, it's interesting to try to strive for believability, rather than to strive for accuracy. You know, like, someone really sent to me that thing, about 99% of Muslims being bad. And, you know, so I know that it's something that someone said, and obviously, you wouldn't put that in an academic paper because it's ridiculous. But not understanding that people say that is missing a big piece of like, why things are happening, the way they're happening. And so I wanted to I guess it's kind of get away from the attachment to views that comes with academic writing, you know, and like defending a position and then having people attack your position and trying to prove it wrong. Like, it's just a very, it can be it can feel kind of what's the word conflictual, or aggressive or something and I wanted to have something that it's like, you can't disagree with a novel, like you can think it's a poorly written novel, which, you know, people could certainly say, you know, and I think one one criticism I've gotten, especially from people who don't know much about Burma is like, this kind of didactic, like, you know, I'm not the most subtle, I think at like, I mean, it's like George Orwell also wasn't an awesome novelist, like a lot of people say like he and not to compare myself to George Orwell, but like, in terms of the import of my work, but like, you know, you don't have to be an amazing, like wordsmith to sort of convey different perspectives that people have on people. And, and to, to make the reader feel something. And so I think that contrast between Okay, so academic writing tries to make the reader think something. And non academic writing would be like trying to make the reader feel something, and not a specific thing, necessarily, right, just like, make them feel what they feel in reaction to these different perspectives.

Host  1:10:49

Right, the second thing that I thought in that seemed particular but also is indicative of the book in general, is just this question that was, in my mind is like, Could this have played out any differently is, is there. And when you look at the how the book progresses, we won't give away the ending, but Adela continues to make a series of well intentioned decisions that don't exactly go how she intended. And so in some way, these are specific moments that if she hadn't have made these choices, overall, the disaster that unfolded wouldn't have come. But it doesn't feel to me like one of those accidents, where you just go left instead of right. And if you just would have done the other thing, it might have turned out differently. It feels more like, frankly, like an inevitability just that the way these conditions and perspectives are set up, I don't really know what range of choices are, are broad options, and flexible styles of communication understanding are possible that if you don't make this disastrous choice here, you make this series of not very wise decisions, or this bits of non engagement, which doesn't do anything or et cetera, et cetera. But in in, in reading this specific scene, it definitely comes out here. And it's, I think, a feature of the whole book. Is this question of, are these? Are these just a series of poor decisions? What could have been differently? Or is Adela a, a kind of imperfect or flawed character that is just incapable of of being able to engage differently? Or is this such something much, much greater where, however, many times you play this and however many choices you took, it's really hard to see how a different outcome would could possibly happen? Yeah,

Rosalie  1:12:48

I mean, I guess, as you're talking, I'm thinking about the concept of dependent origination, which I would not be able to give a coherent explanation of, but just like, the idea that there's a complex relationship between cause and effect is not a deterministic relationship. But it is operating on some principles, right. And that a delicate, you know, she didn't have the skill to get through that conversation in a different way. She reached the limits of her conditioning and her knowledge and like, not that it couldn't have gone differently if she had been making other choices all along. But like, a lot of things would have had to be different, you know, and I think, like, we're always looking for that moment when we can kind of start over or start fresh, without this baggage of our past karma. And that moment does not come right. It's like we're we can only ever operate from the karmic situation that we're in, which has to be, you know, dependent on all our different past actions. And, yeah, I mean, I guess I would be interested, you probably know more about the kind of philosophical aspect than I do. But like, do you think she could have done something different?

Host  1:14:19

Yeah, so there's two different tracks of looking at it. There's the dependent origination context of Buddhism. And then there's just the different cultural conditioning of the different societies. And I couldn't, you know, and I could place myself in that moment, or not an absolute specific moment, but in that context where I've been, and it's really hard and actually what brings to mind now is, I remember at one point, a very good friend of mine Dutch monk, came and stayed with me and Yangon for a few days. And we went at it we while he was there, our neighbor was offering him food We ended up getting into a conversation with my neighbor. And my neighbor went on to talk about a very serious Buddhist meditator and he went on he had just had some sitting and he came to our house refreshed, refreshed and energetic and talking about this insight he had about the the dissolution of any self and how man or woman or Burmese or American or animal or human that these were all just kind of false distinctions and his experiential understanding and this recent sitting and how excited he was for this, and I kind of looked at my Dutch monk friend, little twinkle in my eye and just might have said something or I don't remember, but I said, you know, I think this is an opportunity, I think this is a door right now into being able to have a kind of conversation that we just can't have usually and not not that my neighbor was, was Was anything different than than stood out any way to other Bomar friends we had. But just that both my friend and I had had difficulties and being able to carry on this type of conversation. And so my friend and I went started to converse more about his insight and lead him on about the the how these distinct distinctions disappear. And then we got to the end of it. And we said, Well, how about a Rohingya and Barbuda star there? Does this also hold up. And immediately you saw this kind of discomfort come to him, because it was suddenly bringing a practical reality into his meditative insight. Well, my neighbor is a remarkable, remarkable person, I've spoken about him elsewhere, and just Just someone I just have enormous admiration for. And he held that, you know, and he, you can see the discomfort as he was working through it. But you know, to his credit, which is what I expected, he was able to come out the other end and say, No, you're right. I mean, there can't be how can there not be a distinction between man and dog and, you know, are human and Ghost. And yet, I'm gonna say there's a distinction between these Rohingya that are doing all this to us and the Bomar Buddhists. And so we were able to get there. But I bring up that story because that to me, was a very unique moment where I felt there was actually a doorway through skillful communication to be able to in some manner in this way, it was through meditative insights that we were able to proceed to be able to break through what what wasn't possible before. But that was like living in Myanmar day after day for years, and basically throwing this topic away, because I couldn't find a way to make any headway in it. And this is just one moment that appeared where it was possible. And so I would take the more pessimistic view that it seemed to me the book and that seemed particularly seems to paint a picture, more of impossibility of anything working than just a flawed character or flawed decisions.

Rosalie  1:17:55

Yeah, and I mean, I think that story, thank you for telling that story. It really illustrates like that Buddhism is both, or what people think of Buddhism is this kind of driver of the conflict, right? It's like, in some sense of religiously motivated conflict, but Buddhist teachings also offer the way out of that conflict. And so it's this weird paradox where it's like, Well, maybe if people meditated more, or if they like, spend more time focusing on Buddhist practice, then this religious conflict would kind of dissipate in a way as people gained this wisdom that I think you're talking about, but it's, um, I think it's hard to it's hard for me to sort of explore that possibility. In a way that doesn't feel kind of patronizing, I guess, like, oh, you know, like yet again, this like, white colonial figure being like, you don't even understand the teachings of your own Buddha who you're, you know, fighting for, like, that's not what I'm saying. No. But I think, you know, the story you just told shows that there is there's, you know, the Buddhist teachings lead away from violence and conflict. So, yeah.

Host  1:19:19

Right. And that segues into the last big theme I wanted to discuss which is this concept of exoticism and the exoticism can take perhaps two forms that we can discuss one is the exoticism of Heart of Darkness style of the orientalist for sure of scholars, colonial administrators, tourists, travelers, who are coming from the white world into other countries and wanting to to find an exotic SCI scene that can can fit their expectations of what the Orient is if you want to tie it specifically to Asia. And to Southeast Asia. There's another layer of exoticism and that's of meditation and the Buddhism and the orientalist have certainly latched on since the 19th century in their understanding of Burmese Buddhism what what they want it to be, what it should be, where, where it's not meeting certain marks of what they think it should be achieving and this kind of Orientalist view when I when I first started to read about the orientalist and not just the orientalist of like Edward Saeed of how I was first introduced in his, the Egyptian scholars introduction of his examination, but when I was looking really more specifically at some of the orientalist of the 19th century and mid 20th century and how they would, whether they were practitioners or or monastics, or whether they were scholars or colonial administrators, I was really stunned how much these Orientalist views were still present in in the present day. Among meditators I saw coming over the things that were still were definitely very strong in me at first and that through my time in Burma, I started to unpack and and dissipate the traces of and and to examine, but when I would see foreign meditators, Western meditators coming to Burma, however noble their spiritual path and however noble their intentions, how much they were missing about everything that was in front of them, because they were so just so clouded by Orientalist visions, which, you know, were really like, if you were just to read and examine how these took shape 150 years ago, a very little difference to how it was being held today. And so there's been this desire to exemplify Myanmar the monkhood specifically and as as meditators come today on pilgrimage or meditation courses, that that's still something that that that you see present there. A doula is not a meditator who comes to Burma for the purpose of achieving a spiritual past. She's a, she seems to fit more in the mold of a progressive do gooder American that wants to travel to a foreign place wants some wants to genuinely help but also wants to get some credibility for from her friends back home for her proximity to something more authentic, I can go into all the details of her cocktail of intentions and motivations driving her, but she's not. She's not a meditator, that is that is coming that is steeped in the practice and coming to to Burma for this express purpose. But yet this this does come to be something that she's involved in the act of meditation as well as living in a monastery. And so to what degree were you conscious of this narrative? Both its present day occurrence as well as in the historical Orientalist writings and perspective? To what degree were you conscious of this while writing the book? And how did it inform your decisions?

Rosalie  1:23:02

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think when I first started going to Southeast Asia, in my early 20s, I also I was not particularly interested in Buddhism or meditation. And a lot of my friend's Thai and Burmese friends would like to take me to the temple and kind of like, want me to be interested and encouraged me to do a meditation retreat. And I was always I resisted it, I think, because of kind of what you described of like, well, it's just so cliched like the white person goes to the east and becomes interested in Buddhism. Like, I didn't want to be this, like, I don't know, a stereotype. But, I mean, eventually, it worked. Right? So like, I didn't become interested in it. And I think I you know, when I started to meditate, and when I started to do retreats, and realize, just even get a taste of what that was about, like, it's such a long path. And, and yet, for me, the start of it was like, very dramatic and exciting. You know what I mean? Like the first retreat I did, I was like, This is amazing, like, oh, you know, has anyone heard about this? You know, and I just had I felt so excited to quote discover it, right, like, but I, I also kind of, like it was hard to describe to friends and family. It was hard to. It was hard to present what I had experienced, I think, because of partly because of what you're describing of like, oh yeah, rose went to Thailand and did some meditation retreat and now like, she doesn't drink alcohol anymore. I'd like it. It just sounds so cliched like and i think i i guess i in writing the novel, I mean, I wanted to show what the beginning of that path can look like. And also being just a tiny bit further than Adela on that path that like, that beginning is also very limited. But if it doesn't feel limited, you know, like, it feels amazing. And so it's like, wow, I've discovered this super cool thing that that I just want to share with everybody. And so I think it's, you know, when I think about people coming to Southeast Asia, and like seeking to learn and seeking to study, they come from all kinds of places, and, you know, they can come from a place of humility, or a place of certainty. And you can't really know or judge, like, where other people are coming from really. But I mean, I guess this is one way to say it, like, I wouldn't want someone to read there's one way to read this novel, which is like, don't go to other places. You're not going to know what's going on, and you're just gonna make a big mess, right? Like, it's not that pessimistic of a book. Um, I guess it's kind of more intended to be like a temper on American optimism, both spiritually and politically. Because I think there's a parallel, right. It's like, Americans want to fix everything. Yeah, we also want to, like, reach enlightenment in like, two days, you know, go sit in a cave somewhere and be like, I shall emerge enlightened, dumb. And so that conquering mentality. There's a carryover, right? And I think that's the parallel with colonization, like, this knowledge is mine, like, I'm going to get this knowledge and I'm going to use it to do whatever I want with.

Host  1:27:09

Right, and in another world, I mean, this kind of there's elements of the story that can bring out the the more how to say the more beneficial or inspirational story of like classic Burmese, Buddha's Burmese Buddhist meditation, Burmese Buddhist monastery, meets Western mindfulness and the passionate meets foreign Yogi that comes to participate you there's their side characters here of a Swedish and Taiwanese yogi and there's a description that we'll get to in a moment of Adela zone meditative experience. And so there's, there's elements of the story that could be brought out and told in a different way that come to talk about a, a Westerner leaving behind a kind of materialistic and confused society, to have a more simple, introspective, mindful life and to to see the value in that meditative experience that meditative experiential moment of living in a monastery in learning these techniques, which can be a life changing experience, and is for so many people, and I know it is for you, it was for me, it's wouldn't be doing this podcast here have spent time in Myanmar if I hadn't have gone through such a powerful transformation. And so there is that part of the story that's kind of embedded in at the edges of what is more really centered on the plot.

Rosalie  1:28:40

And maybe I'll just read this short part where she first sees the Taiwanese meditator, meditator and doesn't know what's going on. And then if you want to do that, you can't but you don't have to. Sure. So this is her first encounter with the lady meditator from Taiwan. When Adelie woke from her nap, it was nearly five and she leaped out of bed terrified that she might miss tea time. She was rushing out of her room, she stopped, a woman and a long brown skirt and white blouse was coming out of the room across from hers. There was nothing remarkable about this woman short black hair or stocky figure, yet she appeared to be moving in slow motion like a mine. She pulled the door shut so slowly that her progress was almost undetectable without pausing, but at the same speed, she turned and began walking, if one can call it that, toward the exit, staring at the floor in front of her and placing her feet so softly, that she seemed to be avoiding invisible landmines. Adela, deduce that it must be the lady meditator from Taiwan that who Pina had mentioned. She didn't look like she was meditating. She looked like a zombie. Nonetheless, Adela decided to introduce herself. Hi, I'm she began, and then she stared in amazement as the woman's head turned mechanically toward her. And then her eyes turned within her head millimeter by millimeter to regard Adela. The lady meditator meant Adele has eyes for a moment, nodded almost imperceptibly and then began inching her head back in the opposite direction. is Ella stood there stunned, the woman continued toward the door. Okay, she couldn't help saying out loud. So that was sort of a Delos first encounter with like, a meditator, someone, you know who's doing these practices, who's not a monk. And then I will read a couple of pages of a Delos own experience. So she's doing this like supposed to do a 10 day retreat or whatever. It's maybe like six days in it hasn't been going super great. Like she's been really distracted. She's having a lot of pain in her body. And then this first part that I'm going to read is actually from her blog she's trying to describe to her audience back home, like what the meditation retreat was like. So she says, The sitting meditation before breakfast was always the hardest for me. I was sleepiest in hungriest then, and I had come to dread it. That morning, the morning of the sixth day, something happened to me. It was like sitting in the darkness of the eye doctor's office straining to read the blurry letters, when suddenly the correct prescription was flipped into place. Except my eyes were still closed, my whole body relaxed, but the sensation of my breath coming in and out became crisp and distinct, occurring at the exact moment that I noted in out. It was like tumbling through a trapdoor into the present moment, like falling into step with reality instead of always being a few seconds ahead or behind. I brought my intention, my attention to the place between my shoulder blades that always hurt, it didn't hurt. I practice pausing my breath. My attention paused with it. It was as if the sun was directly above me so that my attention which had always shadowed my body at a distance, was suddenly aligned with my physical self. It was like closing out all the extra programs running on the computer so that one, the important one could work in the way it was supposed to. It felt amazing. So then this transitions out of her blog, and it's back into the narrator's voice describing her in the third person. The only time she'd had a similar experience was when she and Lina had taken mushrooms their junior year, although she decided not to include this detail in her blog. They've walked out into the forest behind campus and the forest was so forest like so sublime, that Adela lay on the ground and smelled the earth and resistant to the dampness seeping into her clothing. The feeling of non resistance that Adela felt that morning in the meditation hall was so powerful, so familiar that for a moment she feared someone had slipped her some drugs. She sat there breathing in and out until she heard the bell for breakfast, and then she opened her eyes. The Buddhist statue sat in front of her eyes downcast, deathless and beautiful. Stay here she thought. She could not stop feeling the in and out of her breath. It was there as she bent her body for the boughs and as she walked to the door, or feet pressing into the ground, she realized with terror and elation, that she could not stop meditating. As this thought arose. She noted thinking, thinking just as Vontae had instructed her, she tried to let her mind wander and it would not go. She tried thinking of the thinking thinking responded her mind. She descended the stairs, one by one each foot, follow revelation. So this was what it was like to walk. This was what it was like to breathe. All that had been a drab background or inner dramas moments earlier was rendered in Technicolor. The sweepers rattan basket abandoned at the dormitories entrance casts such exquisite shadows on the dust. The morning air was impossibly cool, and she took little sips of it as if it were life giving Ambrosia, and it was she was alive, she was breathing. She spent several minutes watching the sun break through a purple cloud on the horizon. It's raised like a white show that only she could appreciate. It took Adela a long time to get to breakfast. Dot Panchavati was waiting for her and she spoon food onto a delas plate reverently aware that something had changed. Yellow bean curry. Adela raise the spoon to her lips felt it entering her mouth noted the expectation of how the food would taste and the actual taste. There was the same sulfurous undertone with a little more lemongrass that morning. Unpleasant but not extremely. So. The difference was the unpleasantness didn't disturb her. It came in it went. It didn't belong to her. She noticed it as indifferently as she noticed the color of the beans or the slant of the light. Then Adela had her second real insight. Being in the present moment, paying attention without resistance was paradise. How can a simple thing like grasping a water glass be paradise? How could she never have realized it before? Her father's attempt to expunge all Judeo Christian lore from her mind must have failed because the image that arose was of the Garden of Eden, Adela felt like she had been forgiven. She realized why dark potential Watty called Buddhism her refuge, Adela saw clearly how afraid she had been how much energy she'd wasted trying to avoid discomfort instead of simply letting it come and go. After breakfast, Adela spent 40 minutes walking to the meditation hall, it didn't matter what she was doing because every action was equally interesting and worthwhile. sitting, walking, taking a shower she had no preference. She wants pleasant and unpleasant sensations arise and pass away without clinging to them. She remembered the Taiwanese meditator how her even her eyeballs had moved slowly. How long did that woman stayed in this state? No wonder she hadn't been interested in making small talk with Adela and she can enjoy the bliss of turning a doorknob or lifting, moving and placing her feet. Suddenly Adela felt a rush of tenderness for the lady, how hard she must have worked on her meditation. How wonderful it was that she had found such serenity, Adele awaited and more moment for the familiar stab of jealousy, the feeling of inadequacy that usually followed her recognition of other people's accomplishments, but did not come. Instead, she felt overwhelming love. It was a kind of love she'd never felt before, certainly not for a stranger. Dear stocky Taiwanese lady Adela wish that wherever the woman was, she was well fed well rested, and that she was continuing her meditation practice. I'll stop there.

Host  1:36:43

Yeah, that's great. Thanks. Thanks for reading that it's great to to end on the note of coming back to mindfulness and the practice. And as you're reading it, I realized also what struck me was the how how you have different layers captured in this book, and just how much I appreciate that. I think that I've been in the number of years I've been in Myanmar the number of different activities I've done, I've worn just so many different hats and one of in being in different communities and different networks. And obviously, it was the meditative network and interest that brought me there. That was the first lens and prism that I came to understand Myanmar and then came to wear other glasses. One of the things I would notice that when different people would come according to their profession, if they were diplomat, or aid worker, or journalist or meditator or English teacher, whatever else, they and I, this is probably true of anywhere in the world. But I found it particularly true in Myanmar, they would really see everything in the country through those lens, and they were not incorrect, they were not even quite misunderstanding things, they were just highlighting and minimizing and looking away from other things that disrupted or distorted or competed with what they wanted to see. And so it would come to be very difficult to talk about the country because if you were talking with a human rights activist, there would be very little interest or appreciation of some of these meditative traditions and what they offered and what their value was. And if you were talking to a meditator who came, there would be kind of a tacit, brief acknowledgement of some of the, the problems in the country but really want to push that aside into a, a worldly issue that one need not concern because this was a different practice, or that can give nominal interest or attention to but but only up to a point and that, that limited understanding of what one's perspective and interests were also limited than the understanding of how this country was operating. And to to only come with one of those lens and to not appreciate some of the others meant that you were always working with an incomplete picture. And, you know, it's very interesting because if you have a scholar whose their their their intention of being there is to want to know everything as deeply as they can. And yet there's this religious meditative spiritual aspect that they're so uncomfortable, it just gets wiped out and their entire analysis is affected by it. And so also with the meditator who was coming to want to bring it to, to investigate ignorance to shine a light on things that are unknown and to to be introspective and, and to gain insights is yet closed off to so much of the country and the monasteries in the country that make them run. And it's just rare to find some, some person or some, some material that is able to acknowledged the coexistence of all these different layers without necessarily knowing how to explain them because I don't know if it's even possible to attempt to, to understand them. beyond just acknowledging that they are existing simultaneously, and they're they're not just existing in their separate planes simultaneously, they're coexisting, and CO creating what the country and culture is. And, and so that I think this passage, which we haven't really talked about the meditative aspects so much in this conversation and how it relates to our lives personally and how it relates to Myanmar. But I think bringing this in now, this is a really important aspect to tie into the conversation. This this aspect of these meditative insights that come and to connect them to the Rohingya issue and to Myanmar in the transition period, and to the Bomar and ethnic relations into the exoticism and an Orientalism that is descending, all these things are happening simultaneously and coexisting. And I imagine for you, as a writer, it was a very conscious, as a writer, and as a person who had lived and experienced this, this was a very conscious desire to want to create an authentic atmosphere where these things did coexist.

Rosalie  1:41:02

Yeah, there's a lot there. And I think, I guess another motivation of writing this book is just to encourage people to like, go do a meditation retreat. So maybe it will inspire some people to do that. But yeah, I see what you're saying, you know, it's like, I have friends who do public health in Myanmar, and like, see everything through that lens, right? Like, it's all about people's health and the nourishment they're getting? And like, how can we ignore that? You know, how can we turn away from that? Or, you know, people who are like, no, no, it's all about elections. And like, if people can't make their voice heard and make choices, and they're not going to be able to choose anything, and I think, you know, because I am a super fan of this podcast, and have listened to a lot of the different episodes and have heard the way different guests have kind of, you know, you have pretty diverse guests coming from many of those different perspectives that you described, like, you know, politics, and certainly spirituality. But what drew me to this podcast was a post that he wrote about spiritual bypassing, I think, not long after the coup. And I think because I kind of went the opposite direction, you know, like, I got interested in Myanmar because of its politics, and then became interested in Buddhism kind of incidentally, along the way, whereas I think it works the opposite way for a lot of people. Um, I, you know, it kind of hadn't even occurred to me that, like, I haven't known that many people who have meditated in Burma, you know, and that attitude of like, Oh, yes, like, it's very sad, what's happening here, but like, the important thing is the practice, basically, and we should just keep practicing and send metta or whatever, like, that, attitude was kind of unfamiliar to me, I am much more familiar with the attitude of like, oh, my gosh, Burma is everything, like we have to, you know, that almost like a feeling of self importance that some people out from outside of the country have about like the impact that they feel they can make, and that their work can make, you know, who would never do who, who, in contrast, totally don't care about what's happening in monasteries, you know, and don't have an interest in the practice or in Buddhism. And I did want to bring those two things together. Because I would say definitely, the vast majority of my academic Burma friends are not, don't consider themselves Buddhists don't practice meditation, and the vast majority of my meditation friends, you know, are not particularly interested in Burmese politics. So I think, you know, finding that overlap. And when I say that, of course, I don't mean people from Myanmar, obviously, there's a lot of overlap there, in terms of those two categories, but, you know, since this book is centered on foreigners experience of the country, that's what I was talking about just then. But yeah, I think I did want to bring that together and have have those perspectives coexist in one book, and you know, it would seem so strange to leave out to have the book take place in a monastery, but to not describe meditation and to not describe some of the Buddhist teachings so I definitely wanted to have that in there.

Host  1:44:37

Well, thank you for those kind compliments of the podcast it is. Podcasts rarely get feedback, people usually listen on their own time. So it's just delightful to to hear that. And it's also quite interesting because as a as a podcast, producer, and and bringing on guests, it's been quite interesting to get the feedback from the different kinds of listeners that await certain kinds of episodes. And, you know, when we made just to give some background for those that don't know, we were before the coup, we were really just focused on stories involving meditation on the spiritual path, which you could definitely do a podcast around, there's just so much dynamicism and interest just about that alone. But after the coup, we opened up to a wider to be able to encompass a wider view beyond just Buddhism and meditation, but to tell the stories of, of what Myanmar was going through. And when we made that transition, there were some people that would reach out to me and say, I am so glad you finally drop this, I am so glad that you finally are going to these other themes I'm so interested in because I just did not want to hear that religious stuff. And to be clear, we didn't drop the meditation part of it, it's still there still episode center just on that it's just it's been expanded. While there's been other people that have been there from the beginning, and they they've given me feedback, they just kind of tune out when it's not meditation, you know, like, when there's this other stuff there. They're just oh, great, you know, with a monk or a spiritual journey, and I only have to hear a little bit about the situation in Myanmar, I can really just get into more of their spiritual teachings. That's, that's what I want to absorb. And, and so it's been sometimes when I have a queue of episodes that are ready to be done, I'm just kind of like, do I really something about RTP or elections or the Powick method or, you know, like, like, ordaining as a monk, and then living for five years, or, you know, it's kind of funny thinking about how that that audience has expanded. But at the same time, I think what I've tried to do is to have a not here, their attitude of like this stuff is all happening together and to want to encourage those that are interested in care about Myanmar have experienced their through something other than than the meditative part, and maybe have been dismissive of it, that they could be interested, they should be interested, it doesn't, whether they take up a practice or not, that that it's interrelated. And as insane for meditators who are listening and see that the world does exist, and this is the world in Myanmar and understanding the dynamics of the country and culture more will probably enhance their practice, I really do believe that because it's grounded, it's contextualized, it's connected, it's not. It's not this, this fantasy, in the mind of what you want it to be, or what you imagined it to be. But it's actually having these connections that only greater knowledge and information can provide. And so and so, just as you have created this book, with these different coexisting layers, I think that's something that's been a positive change that that has come a transition that I hadn't really seen myself doing before. But that also brings out more parts of me where we're able to go with where the guest is, and not have an agenda of, of how we want them to share, but to be able to speak richly from their perspective and experience and understanding and hope that the audience comes along for the ride, you know, hope that that whatever they came into the door, whether it was politics, or coup, or COVID, or meditation or whatnot, that they see that this other topic or guest can even if it's not directly what they're doing, can probably inform them and teach them something more about the situation that they care about, that has been outside their periphery. It also reminds me I had a we had one guest on who was a American expat living in Myanmar for a couple of years. And he was he was very involved in in just the expat world of just like the activities and the, and the social and the networking and everything else. And he also was a very serious meditator in the Chami eight tradition and would go to Chemita monastery, which was close to his home. And he would not come out about his meditation practice to his foreign expat friends. Because the views on Buddhism and meditation were so negative partly from during the crisis, partly from not really being as rational Western thing partly from the image of a white person and Myanmar doing this thing even though he was Hispanic American. But but it was still the whole optics of that and he he kept this part of his life private for the stigma stigmatization that he feared he would face from the expat community for for being involved in all of their activities and perspectives and work and everything but also doing this thing was kind of like going native and in a negative light. And and so he kept us he, I mean, use those words he didn't come out and admit that he meditated described one moment when a friend came to his house and looked at his bookshelf and saw all these books on Buddhism and meditation. And it was like this embarrassment of trying to explain why he was reading. And so, you know, so I think that I hope that in some small way, it's able to, to take these different worlds and different perspectives and not try to explain him because I have no freaking idea I have I mean, I acknowledge it, I see it, I have no idea how some of this stuff works and why it does, other than it is there. And that when it's when one is blind to it, then you're missing something when you're when you're prioritizing something and minimizing something else. But how can we how can we acknowledge the coexistence and co creation of these different spheres and layers, and bring us a greater understanding of what that means about this place and conflict. And you know that and I actually hadn't thought of this until this moment of the conversation with you that that is something very similar that you did, in the writing in, in creating this fictional world based on a reality of the place and the characters coming together, you you have brought these different layers in an authentic way to be able to coexist and CO create something.

Rosalie  1:51:08

Well, that would be a generous description of the book. But yeah, I mean, that's such an interesting story. I haven't listened to that episode about the person you described. But that's, you know, that's kind of sad to me, like, but but it also made me think of a recent episode that I loved the interview with Matsuda. Because for her, it's like, there's no separation. It's not like she was interested in Burmese politics. And then like, got interested in meditation, it seems like it's kind of been intertwined from the beginning. And it was, you know, she describes these pursuing meditation even while she was in prison, and like, just this amazing path that she's on. That is one path. That's not a spiritual path and a political path. It's one path. And, you know, she's someone who, I've had the honor to meet several times. And she's just so amazing and so accomplished. And it was really cool to hear her, describe her, her experiences from both of those perspectives, and not have it be divided in the way that you just described. And so I think another thing I love about this podcast is that it's, you know, there's a balance of like people from the country and from outside of the country, and I think that also brings something important to it.

Host  1:52:34

Yeah, and I think with Martha, what what's also interesting is that when you have a story like hers, I think she is someone who has some attention and is well known in Burmese circles, and by foreign academics, and is highly regarded. And I think, when her story is understood, from their perspective, as mentioned before, the meditation part is minimized. And there's not a lot of curiosity about that. It's really the story of a a political prisoner of someone who has persevered have someone who believes in her values, and meditation is just kind of like, well, if you're a Buddhist, you do meditation, or if you're a Christian, or if you're an artist, or, you know, it's just kind of what you fall back on to survive. And even when Pete Mata and people like her are interviewed on other forums, or when their story is told, there is never that I have seen curiosity in the meditation they do there, there is never questions about, you know, what insights they had, what practices they did, what challenges were there, and just on and on and on the things that the more nerdy technical questions I want to get into. But really, just like Buddhist meditation, it's a monolithic thing that you know, anyone in prison can do, and they just do it and they're okay. And because there's no interest or curiosity, and perhaps some discomfort, so also from the meditative perspective, it's, it's like, oh, meditation. This is this is a story about the triumph of meditation and that, you know, Dhamma will always prevail and dharma always wins. It always works. And whatever circumstances you find yourself in you, you just pull up these techniques and you can you can use these to seek liberation and anytime in place and confront any obstacles. And again, there's this kind of lack of curiosity or interest and maybe even a discomfort and why was she in prison? Like what? What was she actually doing? What was she striving for? What was she working to try to create and so I also don't want to have an interview where all we do is just kind of have the self affirming the self affirming narrative where we're just like yeah, isn't meditation great? Like why Yeah, you know, you did this and you survived in this way. And you know, we just all feel good about ourselves and our practice but you know, to be in Matthew does one of several others I put up there is just a great example of people that are Co Co inhabiting both of these worlds. And not even like stepping in one world and out the other but really, like these are and this is true. We have in our society these these are overlapping intersecting I don't know where one begins and one ends. And I think to understand her story is to, to approach it in that way. Because if you only ask questions about one or the other, she's only going to ask if you only want to know about her meditation experience. Now great meditation is that's probably what you'll get. And it's true. It's nothing that you're creating or fabricating, if you only want to talk about her, her writing 88 political process on Santucci, that's the only thing you'll get. You're not fabricating anything, that's true, that's all there. But if you don't have an interest, you are guilty of highlighting something and minimizing something else, which leads to a lack of a proper understanding as to who this person really is and where they operate. And so I think, yeah, I think that's my long winded way of saying, how to how to put these two worlds together.

Rosalie  1:55:55

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that's just the central tension, right? It's like, you know, we have to have that balance of compassion and equanimity. That's so hard. You know, it's like, how can you keep feeling? How can you keep being open to feeling empathy for people when their suffering is so great? But also, how can you not just be like Adela and be like, Okay, I'll fix it. But to have, you know, just this honesty of like, yeah, what I do actually might not make that much of a difference, but I'm still going to do it. Because if it has any chance of reducing suffering, either mine or someone else's, it's worth doing. I think that kind of humility is, is something that can take a long time to get to, and certainly, still working on

Host  1:56:54

Yeah, and also sitting in discomfort, you know, sitting in that discomfort of and that that discomfort can take on many forms, according to who the person is, it could mean a discomfort in, in realizing the value that some people if not oneself, place on the meditative and spiritual path and, and that that is important to them, and being open to learning why it is and how it manifests without judgment. For those that aren't physically on the spiritual path. And coming from a Western background, that discomfort can mean that really, really bad and ugly things are now happening in Myanmar. And let's be honest, they've been happening for a long, long time. And they've been happening to places and people that most of us meditators are involved with, and being being able to bear witness and open to a sense of spaciousness that that is acknowledging this happens without necessarily trying to fix it, but realizing this is in the same world as the practice that I'm doing.

1:57:52

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Host  1:57:57

Yeah, well, great. This has just been a great conversation about looking at some of the background that went into your book and writing and then extrapolating beyond that, I've really enjoyed it.

Rosalie  1:58:07

Yeah, me too. Thank you so much.

Host  1:58:43

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2:02:33

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